


Strikwadas

by sam_kom_trashkru



Series: The Chronicles of the Nightbloods [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F, and the nightbloods are her lil ducklings, i blame tumblr user reshopgoufa for this, its all her fault, lexa is a proud mama bear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-28 22:29:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6348178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sam_kom_trashkru/pseuds/sam_kom_trashkru
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is nothing stronger than the love of a mother for her children, and Lexa adores her ducklings with the fierceness of a bear. </p>
<p>or</p>
<p>How Lexa raises a bunch of kids when she's little more than a child herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strikwadas

**Author's Note:**

> Again, this is all tumblr user reshopgoufa's fault, and I really love how she calls the nightbloods ducklings so I used that. I didn't know how to say "duck" in trigedasleng, so I made it "wada" because ducks waddle, and "strik" means little so "strikwada" means little duck or duckling.

Lexa has seen sixteen summers when she is made the Commander. Her hands are still stained with the dark blood of her fellow _natblidas_ , and she feels their weight in her heart, on her soul. She cannot cry, cannot show weakness, because that’s what love is, and she is _heda_ now. But she can see them when she closes her eyes. She sees Cal and Arwin, heads thrown back in laughter, hands clutching their stomachs after successfully playing a prank on an angered Titus. She can practically _hear_ Everest’s long, disapproving sigh when Costia peeks her head into the living quarters of the _natblidas_ (regular _sekens_ aren’t supposed to be allowed in, after all). There is a ghost of Jakku’s hands in her hair, the grinning boy telling her that she couldn’t have all of that hair getting in the way of her pretty face. She ached for one of Ari’s hugs, the girl was so small, shouldn’t have to deal with the severity of her blood. Wren’s eyes stare back at her, calculating and cold and so blue, a challenge raised at every smirking glance, and hear Ollie trying to calm down the hot-headed girl, too peaceful to fight, even though Fawn constantly riled him up.

Costia is here, though, Costia is warm and _alive_ , and Lexa has never been so thankful that the girl was did not have _sheidjus_ . Costia holds Lexa as she shakes, refusing to cry, because those that she’d been raised with, her _bros_ and _sisses_ , they were dead, gone, never coming back.

And Lexa still lived.

Her heart dreaded the day that Titus started coming to her with new _natblidas_ , a fresh bunch of children to raise like pigs for slaughter, to groom to be the perfect killers, the perfect leaders. She was selfish, didn’t want to grow to care for children, to form a family with them as _Heda Amaya_ had made with them.

Her wish was fulfilled for only a year.

The day seemed as normal as the others. She woke with a smile on her face, fuzzy black hair in her face, a warm body in her arms, and moved languidly, stretching before preparing herself for the day’s activities. She would be meeting with Luna, the leader of the _Floukru_ , to discuss trade details, and Titus entered her quarters just as she placed the golden cog on her forehead.

“ _Heda_ ,” he said respectfully, bowing, as she turned to observe him.

“Speak freely, Titus,” she said softly, tugging her fingers through her hair to twist them into her signature braids. Her handmaidens had often offered to do it, but none of their fingers felt as familiar as Jakku’s, so Lexa chose instead to do it herself.

“I’ve brought someone to meet you.” She felt the blood freeze in her chest, felt her heart stutter and fill with dread. At Titus’s signal, a guard entered the room, tugging along with him a small child, eyes drooping and thick with sleep. His hair was soft and messy, the color of straw, and his eyes were familiar piercing blue, though they were covered as he tried to rub the tiredness from them with a small hand. He was so _small_ , so innocent looking, and Lexa wanted to cry.

“Introduce yourself to _heda_ , _yongon_ .” The boy blinked owlishly a few times, still adjusting to the morning light, and he looked up at Lexa with such reverence, such _trust_. The fact that he felt drawn to her implicitly made her feel both warm and terrified at the same time.

“ _Ai laik Aden kom Trikru, heda!”_ he said with a small, tentative smile. “ _Kom sven snous_.”

Seven winters. He’d only lived to see seven winters.

Lexa loved him instinctively. She knew, deep down, that she shouldn’t, but how could she not? Aden would always be her favorite, because he was her first, and he hailed from the same clan as her, where the forest grew in his bones and the trees felt familiar under his skin. His light footsteps had been the first to trail loyally behind her, reminiscent of a mother duck and her ducklings, which earned him the nickname _strikwada_. He pretended to be annoyed by the term of endearment, but Lexa knew his heart filled with secret joy every time Lexa demonstrated her favor.

Aden’s heart was so big for one so small, reminding Lexa so painfully of Ollie. Of all the pillars of the commanders, the one he best perpetuated was _compassion_. His short arms seemed much to small to heft a blade, staff, or spear, but he picked up each weapon Lexa presented him with vigor. Ever time he was knocked down, he got back up with a smile, because every time he fell was a lesson on how to get back up again. His fingers were deft and sticky, and Lexa could often observe him sneaking honeycakes away from Titus’s disapproving glares to hide away and eat later. Every time he took a few, Lexa always woke up with a honeycake on her bedside table (Costia often complained that he didn’t think to bring two).

After Aden came Ellis _kom Plaikru_ , who had lived to see eight shedding of the leaves. Her hair was vibrant red like the season she was born in, and her eyes brown and earthy, but calculating. From the first moment Lexa met her, she knew that this girl, she was the embodiment of wisdom. There was an old earth game that Lexa had been taught by Amaya, a tradition leading all the way back to _Becca_ , the first commander, involving small, intricately carved wooden pieces on a checkered board, called chess. The board had been the first thing Ellis’s curious eyes were drawn to upon entering Lexa’s quarters, not the multitude of swords nor the miscellaneous baubles from her journeys across all the land, and Lexa had wasted no time in teaching the game to the girl.

Though young, Ellis had perfected the art of strategy, and soaked up all of the history Lexa taught her like a sponge, munching on stolen honeycakes while Lexa recounted different battle plans to her. She was the most enthusiastic about learning to read and write, practicing her lettering without Lexa having to remind her, and practically glowing every time Lexa stole her away to look at books that spoke of the great Athena, who quickly became the young girl’s role model. The two of them were alone for a year and a half before another _natblida_ joined Lexa’s ranks, a short firecracker of a boy named Nam. His skin was tanned, like the people from the east, and hailed from _Gloukru_ , the people of the glowing forest. Though his hair and eyes were inky and dark like the night sky, the boy himself was terrified of the dark, unaccustomed to its nothingness. Where the soft blue and green slows of his home had comforted him, he now had nothing, and Lexa snuck him candles at night, even though Titus would scowl and tell her not to coddle the children, because they would be _heda_ one day, and _hedas_ could not show weakness.

Where Aden was the diplomat and Ellis was the tactician, Nam was the warrior, the strength, the _yuj_ . He was most at home on the training grounds, eyes bright and dancing as he dodged and parried Lexa’s unrelenting blows, bruises trophies of his growth. He was small and wiry and fast, and his boundless energy sometimes left even Lexa exhausted. While he wasn’t fighting, he was climbing trees like a _pauna_ to rescue struggling birds that Aden would nurse back to health, or sneaking around the library with Ellis. The three of them became nigh inseparable, and it broke Lexa’s heart, because she knew that one day, the three of them would have to fight against each other to the death, her little _strikwadas_ , forced to compete in a conclave they were destined for just on account of the color of their blood.

She swore to live, for them, as long as she could. Let them remain children a while longer, just a second more. Every moment counted.

When Ellis is ten years of age, and Aden and Nam nine, the others start arriving with less time in-between them. Mari, from the _Floukru_ , with wide blue eyes and long chestnut hair and an affinity for the horses, able to quell them when even the most experienced stable hands failed. Pep, from the _Sankru_ , who comes older than even Ellis, at eleven, and weaves stories for the younger children, laughter in his eyes and wanderlust in his heart. Lysh of the _Leikru_ and Lyz from _Roukru_ arrived at the same time, polar opposites that somehow managed to mesh, the easily adaptable nature of the Lake People balancing out the stony stubbornness of the Rock Line People. It was after their arrival to Polis that Lexa began her endeavor for her Coalition.

Those clans who already had children under Lexa’s tutelage came easier, eager to hear if _their_ natblida was doing better than the rest. Lexa never spoke, of course, because they were _all_ her children, her _strikwadas_ , even though she had favorites, but smiled softly and informed leaders that they were thriving in the city life of Polis, studying hard. (She failed to mention that they often gorged themselves on stolen honeycakes, courtesy of Aden, who the bakers loved too much to scold.)

Those who hadn’t yet sent nightbloods to Lexa, the Delphi Clan, the Ice Nation, the Broadleaf, the Blue Cliff Clan, and the people from Shadow Valley, they were more skeptical of a coalition. The threat of the _maunon_ loomed over all of them like a dark cloud, but they trusted Lexa even less. They remained unconvinced, and under the guidance of Queen Nia of _Azgeda_ , they started a bloody civil war, with many casualties on both sides. Regardless of Lexa’s attempt to shield her _strikwadas_ , Titus insisted that they experience the haze of bloodlust on battlefield, and it was there that the eldest, Ellis, Aden, Nam, and Pep, made their first kills.

It was Lexa who held them close to her breast and wiped the blood from their hands gently, whispering sweet words into their ears. The first kill was always the hardest. It settled in your throat like a rock that couldn’t be dislodged, before finally sinking to the bottom of your stomach where it would remain forever, haunting only on some days, but never fully gone.

When Lexa had seen nineteen summers, the unthinkable happens. Aden is nine at this point, Nam remaining dutifully at his side with Ellis, who loves to brag about her additional year of age (to which Pep scoffs and claims that because he is the oldest, he is the best), and one more addition has been made to Lexa’s little family in the form of Daya, who is seven, and who hails from the Delphi Clan, who had drawn out of the Civil War after Lexa singlehandedly slaughtered the majority of their tyrannical leadership. Costia had always been there for her, in the nights where Lexa woke with a tightened throat and hurried breaths, she’d been the one to press soft kisses to Lexa’s forehead and rub comforting circles onto the back of her palm. She was the one who cleaned Lexa’s wounds and patched up the _natblidas_ whenever they got too carried away during training. She had been the only constant in Lexa’s life from her own time as an initiate, and now she was _gone_.

It felt as though a hole had torn itself out of Lexa’s chest, a hallway that was much too cold and so painfully empty. When Lexa woke to find the head of the girl she’d loved delivered to her bedside in a box, it took all of her willpower to _not_ do the same to the quaking Ice Nation messenger in front of her. She could hear Costia in the back of her head _You need this coalition, Lexa, do not throw it away for me. Besides, can’t set a bad example for Aden, can you?_ And so Lexa let the man live, but her fury still burned bright, and she threw herself into training with her _strikwadas_ with even more enthusiasm as before. They, too, suffered from the loss, had loved Costia dearly, but she knew it was long past time for them to understand that commanders didn’t get happy endings.

The civil war lasts for another year, bloodshed only increasing. The Blue Cliff Clan gifts her with a quick-footed boy named Wiley, whose hair is wild with the wind from the ocean, and whose eyes are as untamable as the sea. His feet are in constant motion, whether it be racing the others, or twisting into traditional dances of his people. The Broadleaf deliver soon after, as their closest alliance was with those from the Blue Cliffs, and Lexa welcomes Koda with open arms, the timid boy finding friends with Aden and Nam, who understand his love for climbing trees. The Ice Nation remains relentless, but the Shadow Valley people are faltering, tired of the constant fighting. Their leader, Kieron, seeks Lexa out personally to seek an alliance.

The dark skinned woman looks out of place in the open, so used to the shadows that her people used to cloak themselves. When she and Lexa speak on the terms of the _Sheidkru’s_ initiation into the coalition, the woman pauses as though debating something, before motioning with her hand. Lexa tenses for a moment before watching a small boy, only six winters under his belt, sneak out of the shadows, where she’d failed to notice him. Kieron introduces him as her own son, Sammy, and begs Lexa to care for him and teach him with the others, to give him a chance. Lexa agrees, and Sammy becomes the eleventh _strikwada_ in Lexa’s family.

Queen Nia, now completely outnumbered, is forced to submit to the coalition, but she does so muttering darkly, forced to give her son Roan up for banishment, and Lexa finds great joy in casting the boy out of her lands. It is his fault Costia is dead after all, as it was he who was sent to collect the girl. Lexa never receives a _natblida_ from the Ice Nation, even though she knows they are bound to have one, but she never complains. The Ice Nation can keep their nightblood, for all she cares.

When Lexa is twenty-two and Aden twelve, invaders fall from the sky.

It is Wiley who tells her, feet moving quicker than the eyes can trace from TonDC, where he’d been training with some scouts (he ought to use the speed he was gifted), and wheezes out in gasping breaths that mountain men are raining from the sky. Lexa does not believe him at first, but Sammy arrives after him a day later, and informs her solemnly that he’d been watching them from the shadows, and that it was true. He tells her also that Nam speared through one of them out of surprise, and the scowling boy grumbles at being ratted out, but Lexa does not punish him. Sammy continues on to tell her that they are all children, and there are one hundred and one of them, the youngest a girl who appeared to be the same age as Aden, and the oldest an arrogant boy who appeared the same age as Lexa.

What Sammy fails to inform Lexa of is the girl with the sky in her eyes and the forest in her heart with hair the color of straw, the girl who would burn three hundred of Lexa’s warriors alive in a ring of fire. Ellis resents her at first, because the ring of fire swept up her older brother, Islar, but soon comes to understand that they need the _Skaikru_ in order to bring down the mountain and free their people from this curse once and for all. If there is anyone who understands sacrifice, it is Ellis, whose wise eyes had spent hours absorbing ink off of weathered pages telling her exactly which battles had been won in history and why. Aden, of course, looks at her like she’s insane when the only books she chooses to read are the ones about war, because there are just so many to choose from. His own personal favorites are about the young orphaned boy destined to be the hero of his entire world, who held the mark of lightning on his forehead. Lexa could often hear Aden muttering old world latin under his breath, as though if he wished hard enough it might actually do something. She admired his dedication.

When Lexa leaves Clarke at the mountain, she wishes that she has Costia to comfort her. To see the utter heartbreak in the other girl’s eyes, it had absolutely shattered her. The _may we meet again_ was still an echo on her lips, and she felt another stone sink to the bottom of her stomach. She wondered if Clarke’s ghost would hurt her as much as Costia’s. Ellis had understood then, too. It made no sense to sacrifice thousands of warriors for forty-nine sky people, especially when their alliance with them was shaky already at best. But the wise girl couldn’t quite shake the feeling of guilt off of her.

Aden, of course, ever the peacemaker, had been furious. He’d made to scream himself hoarse at his _heda_ before he noticed the unshed tears in her eyes, and it clicked within him like a switch, and instead of yelling and calling her a _branwada_ , he wrapped his smaller arms around her waist like she had done so many times with him and held her tightly, and Lexa almost broke down in his arms. She couldn’t. They wouldn’t see her like this. They had to know that commanders didn’t have weaknesses.

But she did. Eleven of them were her children, and she would love them fiercely until the day she died. But there was another now, a twelfth, who didn’t have black blood, but was special all the same because she held stardust in her veins.

When Clarke comes to Polis, Aden immediately takes a shining to her. From their similar appearance, from their hair to their eyes, the two could easily be mistaken as brother and sister, or, perhaps, mother and child (Lexa tries and fails to refrain from imagining herself and Clarke with a son who looked too much like Aden to be anyone else). He has always been the most gentle of his fellow nightbloods, and admires Clarke for her ability as a healer. Watching the two of them interact makes Lexa’s heart swell with hope, and she loves her first _strikwada_ even more.

Clarke gets along with the children much better than she gets along with Lexa, but Lexa knows she deserves the blonde’s silent rage. So she chooses instead to watch the girl who holds her heart socialize with her _strikwadas_ , and she knows that any of them who succeed her (she still privately roots for Aden) will stay true to the alliance with the thirteenth clan. Ellis plays chess with the girl, delighted when she finds someone who’s skill level is higher than hers, a challenge. Lexa rarely has time to play chess these days, and Ellis always complained that Aden was much too easy to beat.

Nam takes it upon himself to correct Clarke’s handling of throwing knives. Her fighting skills are sloppy at best, only because she’d been forced over the past three months to survive by herself in the wild. With accuracy, he informed her, she would be much safer, and so he took to throwing knives with her until all of her hits were dead on target. Koda teaches her how to climb trees quickly, like _pauna_ , springing from branch to branch, and swinging down vines like an ape, and Clarke soon climbs trees as often as she can, staring up at the home she’d left behind from atop the tallest trees.

Sammy shakes his head at her and calls her a _branwada_ before teaching her to step softly.

“You’ll be dead before you can react if you keep stomping with more weight than a pregnant horse,” he tells her dryly when she looks offended at being called an idiot, and Lexa can still hear Aden’s howling laughter at Clarke’s gobsmacked expression. Sammy has never been one for tact, preferring to state things as they were, but Clarke learned her lesson soon enough, and found her feet stepping lightly through the forest until even Sammy’s well-trained ears could not hear her. Wiley tried to get her to run, bouncing on his feet with excitement, but that was one thing that Clarke wasn’t very good at, but it was the source of much entertainment for the others.

By the time it has come for Clarke to leave, to return to her people before the blockade is put into place, Lexa feels her heart sink in her chest even more, but then Clarke is in front of her, and Clarke is kissing her, and Lexa feels so whole and complete.

She is allowed happiness for only a short hour.

The last thing she feels are Clarke’s lips on hers, and she can hear Clarke as she fades away.

“In peace, may you leave the shore. In love, may you find the next. Safe passage on your travels, until our final journey on the ground. May we meet again.”

When she opens her eyes, she is surrounded by love. Gustus has pulled her into a bone-crushing hug, and Anya is leaning against a tree, looking annoyed.

“Didn’t expect to see you here so soon, _branwada_ ,” she says with a shake of her head, and Lexa almost cries when she is passed to the warm embrace of Costia, who is smiling in understanding, because she knows that Lexa’s soulmate is still alive, but she is here as comfort for now. Lexa almost doesn’t hear her old mentor when she continues speaking. “I can’t believe you threw away a century of tradition to impress a _girl._ ”

“She wasn’t just any girl, Anya,” says Lexa softly, and she remembers what she said to Titus weeks before, “Clarke’s special.” Anya merely rolls her eyes, muttering under her breath about lovestruck fools.

“Come, there are people waiting to greet you.”

Lexa’s brothers and sisters have grown past the children they were at the time they died, and they welcome her with open arms. Jakku berates her for braiding her hair wrong for over six years, because she could never quite get it right. Cal and Arwin congratulate her for managing to drive Titus even more insane then they had, though they all quietly stew at his role in Lexa’s death. She could have lived much longer. Everest groans with Anya as Lexa tells them excitedly of Clarke, and how amazing she was. She would miss her, truly. Wren rolls her cold eyes and complains whenever Lexa is in earshot that _she_ should have been commander, and Ollie shoves her shoulder, out of character from the peaceful boy Lexa remembered, before telling her that he’d had to deal with her and Fawn for six years up here without Lexa, and they’d finally broken him.

Ari’s hugs are as warm and welcoming as Lexa remembers.

When the day comes for the conclave, Lexa’s heart fills with dread. She knows that her _strikwadas_ will be joining her soon, so she heads to the meadow where the souls of the dead are greeted, and she waits patiently.

Aden is the first to arrive.

His eyes are wide and panicked still, but he takes one look at Lexa and rushes towards her, into her open embrace, burying his head into the familiar warmth of her stomach, a broken “ _Nomon”_ wrenching itself from his throat. He died as he lived, protecting quiet Sammy from the wrath of the Ice Nation nightblood, Ontari, and though Lexa is disappointed that he will not be the next commander, she is so proud of him.

The others trickle in slowly, each greeting Lexa similar to how Aden had. Even Wiley had not managed to outrun death, and Lexa felt herself regretting not demanding Nia to deliver her nightblood to be trained with the others. Perhaps, if Ontari had been raised with them, things would be different. Nia had her last laugh that night, when it was the forgotten nightblood of he Ice Nation who was made _Heda_.

They live happily together (well, not exactly living, because they’re dead, after all) in the forests in the clouds where no harm can come to them. The children have time to be children, to play in the streams and scale trees to their hearts content, and Nam is finally reunited with the glowing butterflies native to his homeland. Aden is almost always found glued to Lexa’s side, and she still tells him stories, because he has always been, and will always be, her favorite.

Many years later, it is he who leads them back to the meadow, with hurried exclamations of:

“She’s coming!”

And Lexa lets herself be dragged by this boy who isn’t actually a boy any longer, until laughter is escaping her throat freely and the others are pushing ahead, each of them trying to get there first. Wiley wins, of course, as he always does, and the others should know by this point to never challenge the boy from the cliffs by the sea to a race of any sort.

She is as beautiful as the first time Lexa saw her, pale skin unblemished, and the youth returned to her eyes, which are still so blue, and now void of the pain that had filled them since Clarke’s first steps on the ground. When Lexa’s green eyes met Clarke’s blue ones, it was as though everything in the world stopped, and the children parted like the Red Sea so that the long separated lovers were able to meet once more in the middle. Clarke was babbling nonsensically and Lexa was _crying_ because she was so happy, and they were together and everything was okay.

Death was never the end.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for killing Lexa but this was in canonverse and as much as I hate Jrotinhell I decided to stick with her death for the purpose of being happy with her ducklings in the sky.
> 
> Kudos/comments are always appreciated! Come hang out on tumblr, [hedaclexa](http://www.hedaclexa.tumblr.com).


End file.
